One Death, Nine Stories
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
How could one teenage boy’s life elicit other kids’ first experiences — even after he dies? Nine interconnected stories from nine top YA writers. Kev’s the first kid their age to die. And now, even though he’s dead, he’s not really gone. Even now his choices are touching the people he left behind. Ellen Hopkins reveals what two altar boys (and one altar girl) might get up to at the cemetery. Rita Williams-Garcia follows one aimless teen as he finds a new life in his new job — at the mortuary. Will Weaver turns a lens on Kevin’s sister as she collects his surprising effects — and makes good use of them. Here, in nine stories, we meet people who didn’t know Kevin, friends from his childhood, his ex-girlfriend, his best friend, all dealing with the fallout of his death. Being a teenager is a time for all kinds of firsts — first jobs, first loves, first good-byes, firsts that break your heart and awaken your soul. It’s an initiation of sorts, and it can be brutal. But on the other side of it is the rest of your life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The second editorial collaboration between Aronson and Smith (after 2011's Pick-Up Game) collects nine short stories by Ellen Hopkins, A.S. King, Rita Williams-Garcia, Chris Barton, Nora Raleigh Baskin, and more; not unlike Adele Griffin's The Unfinished Life of Addison Stone, also out this season, the book is built around the influence of a deceased teenager, remembered and considered by those around him. Kevin Nicholas, charismatic and angry, has been shaped by his father's suicide; eight years later, 19-year-old Kevin's body is zipped into a bag, and everyone from his younger sister and high school peers to the cosmetologist prettying his corpse dwell on their relationships with Kevin or use his death to evaluate their own lives. Predictably, anything good that people think they knew about Kevin proves false. The girls connect him with sex, the boys with innocence-destroying competition. The impact of many details and events depends on readers' willingness to read into what is said. There are plenty of dots to connect and introspection from adolescents on the precipice of something new and unknown, but most of these authors have done better in longer formats. Ages 14 up.
